From owner-marxism-international  Sat Apr  5 13:03:20 1997
From: Braderr@aol.com
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 13:01:54 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <970405130153_607415385@emout05.mail.aol.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: M-I: Grammatica...Playing Word Games

Carol Cox wrote:

<<  This is nursery school *playground* activity to
 speak of bourgeois idealists *taking over* the academy >>

Brad: Carol, I apologize for my indiscriminate use of the word "return," I
had not meant to imply that the academy had ever been "held" by Marxist
theory.  My point, which I think you got but simply disagree with, was that
the academy needs to be one area where an attempt at a Marxist intervention
is made.

 >>Again we have schoolboy
errors of a sort which will pass in a dormitory bullsession, but
not in serious conflict over principle.<<

Why this need to pull "rank" and "experience" in such a condescending manner?
 As at least one member of the younger generation who will eventually succeed
yours, I would appreciate someone to point out what they see as faulty logic
without infantilizing me.  I am on this list, in part, to learn how to engage
in "serious conflict over principle."  This might be easier if I was not
"locked out" as some child who's rantings should be dismissed (speak when
your spoken to?) as nonsense.  I had, up until this point, found your posts
to me some of the most effective (especially in dealing with the whole gender
thing that came up).  Which leads to:

>>I *know* what you *want* to mean Brad, so
don't send me to the dictionary: I'm claiming that your use of it is
itself ideological and does not name anything real. This is particularly
clear when you use the oxymoron ideas/ideology. Ideas are precisely what
an ideology is NOT.<<

Fine, could you explain this further then.  I was specifically thinking of
Marx's statement in "The German Ideology" that, "in every epoch the ruling
ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling mataerial force of society, is at
the same time its ruling intellectual force."  Granted that notions of
ideology do have a long and complex history, but I don't understand why you
say that the term "ruling class ideologies" is not correct.  I also don't
understand your conception that ideas are not ideology.  Please enlighten me
(and try to do so without recourse to infantilization).

>>The source of our ideas is far more complex than
in your simplistic manifestos.<<

I have never written a manifesto.  I am not a member of the Marxist
Collective at Buffalo (although I support them entirely).  I think you're
confusing my posts with theirs.  Also, I never claimed that "School is where
our ideas come from."  I said that it is ONE of the ideological apparatuses
working today.

What I thought could be a productive thread on this list has obviously
dredged up some feelings of resentment, anger, etc.  I would rather stay away
>from these personal problems and engage with the debate in a more global (as
opposed to local) fashion.  I am a comrade who can take serious critique, but
the "young whippersnapper" stereotype you are deploying is uneccesary and
annoying.  Let's deal with the issues and not caricatures.

In Solidarity,
Brad Rothrock


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